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by Marina Sum
September 9, 2002
Michael "Misko" Hevery has been an engineer consultant for the Sun™ ONE
Studio (formerly Forte™ Tools) group for two years. Along with a team of two
developers, he's building a J2EE™ technology-compliant application called Sun ONE Update
Center, which performs configuration management tasks for software and
arranges for product deliveries and updates to customers. The application's built-in
checks ensure that product components and configurations are correct and
compatible.
The Sun ONE Update Center team first deployed and ran its product on Sun ONE
Application Server 6.0. In May, the entire application was deployed on the brand-new release: Sun ONE Application Server 7 (pre-Beta). Recently, Misko shared with
us his observations about release 7.
Attatool!
In Misko's eyes, the advantages of using Sun ONE Application Server 7 are:
Faster deployment, J2EE environment -- "Deploying applications is now much
more efficient--the speed is easily noticeable," Misko says. He also applauds the
optimization of Sun ONE Application Server 7 around Java™ technology as the
development environment. "That's an excellent decision--a tremendous
convenience for developers," adds Misko. J2SE™ 1.4 platform -- This platform provides many valuable features, among
them an optimized Enterprise JavaBeans™ (EJB™) container, caching of
servlet and JavaServer Pages™ (JSP™) results, as well as improved support
for Java Database Connectivity (JDBC™) connections and J2EE connectors. An integrated HTTP engine from Sun ONE Web Server -- Before, despite the
connection between Sun ONE Application Server and Sun ONE Web Server and
third-party Web servers, those products were separate from one another with
different installation and configuration processes. Now that they are integrated,
the operations--communications between the products--are seamless. No extra
configurations are necessary; they are all handled during installation.
From a deployment perspective, the HTTP server and Java containers run in
process and generate higher performance. Integration with Sun ONE Studio -- Misko calls this feature a remarkable
benefit to the UI: "Nice wizards, with perfectly configurable properties at a
glance. I really like the design and functionalities offered by the session property
pane and automatic generation of deployment descriptors. What's more, I can
customize the generated templates, which gives me a lot of control." Web-based Administration Console -- "Web-based GUIs are superior. No
separate installations or worries about distinctions between the client and the
server or security," says Misko. Ant interface -- Misko finds this command-line interface handy, practical, and
useful. "I can build, deploy, and run an application with a single command.
Awesome!" he concludes. Adoption of new, leading-edge technologies -- Examples are SOAP and other
Web service protocols, now part of Sun ONE Application Server.
The Sun ONE Update Center engineering team plans to leverage Web services
to create a more standardized and flexible interface for the application. "It's
impressive that those protocols--JAXM, JAXP, JAXR, JAX-RPC, SOAP, and WSDL--
are now integrated with Sun ONE Application Server 7. I'm gearing up to learn the
ins and outs," adds Misko.
Wish List
"Every day, application developers grapple with the endless cycle of coding,
compiling, deploying, testing, and code fixing. That cycle can never be fast enough,"
Misko asserts. So, at the top of his wish list is this item: an ever-speedier deploy-
execute-compile cycle provided by Sun ONE Application Server. The other
desirables are:
Attateam!
For now, Misko's overall assessment on Sun ONE Application Server 7: "Definitely a
robust and viable product! Kudos to the development team."
See also:
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